“Seriously,” said Russo.
“Nothing at all?”
“Look,” he said, “you two were alone together, you both got doped, she went over the edge, and you went to the nuthouse. The drugs in your food and in your systems are the only evidence. I had nearly forty guys go over the scene for two days. There was nothing. No evidence whatsoever.”
It wasn’t good enough. They simply had to find her killer. I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Wow. You looked for two whole days?”
Russo turned to Harper. “This is why I don’t usually talk to civilians about cases.”
Harper said, “I know Malcolm appreciates this, don’t you Malcolm?”
“Oh, I do.”
Russo said, “Yeah, whatever.”
We sat there, the three of us saying nothing. I took a sip of water. Harper sighed. Russo stared at the wall and blinked sometimes.
“So, Malcolm,” said Harper at last. “You been working?”
“A little.”
“Anybody interesting?” Harper looked at Russo. “Malcolm drives movie stars for a living.”
Russo said, “I know that, Harper.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Harper. “So, how about it, Malcolm? Who you driving lately? Jennifer Aniston maybe? Angelina Jolie?”
I said, “Nobody like that. Business is pretty slow since I got out. So far just a couple of guys from Guatemala.”
“I never heard of a movie star from Guatemala.”
“They weren’t movie stars. They were sort of unofficial diplomats who used to be terrorists.”
Harper laughed. Russo looked bored.
I decided to tell them about it, thinking maybe they could shed some light on the Doña Elena Montes case. I started talking, beginning with pickup at the hotel when I first spotted Vega and Castro’s handguns, then covering everything else in detail, from the high-speed drive to Hollywood to the proposition Vega made in front of Musso & Frank. I didn’t mention that he and Castro were with the URNG, and I didn’t mention their names.
When I was done, Harper said, “Did you take the case?”
“I turned them down. But I thought you guys might be interested.”
Russo said, “Why’d they go to you?”
Harper said, “Sal, I told you what Malcolm does.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not big on private dicks.”
I said, “They came to me because you guys wouldn’t help them.”
Harper sighed.
I watched a couple of Latino men come in and take a seat in the booth across the restaurant. They were both nicely dressed. One wore tan slacks and a cream-colored raw-silk shirt with the top three buttons open to expose a gold medallion on a chain around his neck. The other wore a pair of jeans, but they were pressed and starched, and his shirt was also silk. It seemed like the one with the medallions glanced my way, but he was wearing sunglasses so I couldn’t tell for sure. I was pretty sure I’d seen them before. I watched the waitress bring them menus. It occurred to me that I wasn’t really angry with Russo. I was just angry.
I said, “So, do either of you know anything about the Toledo murder?”
“Sal, you were in on that one, weren’t you?” said Harper.
“Yeah. They give me most of the cases with movie stars.”
“How come?” I asked.
Russo looked at me. His eyes barely showed behind his squinting, fleshy lids. He said, “I don’t know. Maybe ʼcause I can keep a secret.”
I could feel my face turning red. I looked down. I took a breath. I looked back up at him. “I’ve been feeling pretty angry lately. Sometimes I take it out on the wrong people.”
Russo looked at me another moment, then nodded. “Don’t worry about it.”
Harper said, “That Toledo case, we never collared the perp, right?”
“No,” said Russo. “She’s still out there.”
I said, “How much money did she get?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
I thought I’d heard him wrong. “Two hundred thousand dollars?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Did Toledo talk her down or something?”
“He did, yeah. Five hundred is what she asked for.”
“Why only five hundred? The Guatemalans told me Toledo was supposed to be worth something like sixteen million.”
Russo said, “That’s a good question.”
The waitress brought our food. Russo took a massive bite out of his burger. He chewed with his mouth open. Bits of burger fell onto the table. I looked at Harper and raised my eyebrows. Harper shrugged and dug in.
“So,” I said, “what do you know about the kidnapper?”
Russo made no comment.
I took a bite of my cheeseburger, chewed, and swallowed before saying, “I heard the woman’s name is Alejandra Delarosa. I heard she was Toledo’s mistress.”
“How about that. I think we heard that too.”
“Were you able to confirm it? Anybody see them together at hotels? Unexplained gaps in both of their calendars? Anything like that?
“Nope,” said Russo, “but that don’t mean a thing.”
“Do you have proof they even knew each other?
“She worked for him. A secretary. Or administrative assistant. Whatever.”
“How long did she work for Toledo?” I said.
“About a year, maybe. We’re talking about a seven-year-old cold case here, so I could be wrong. But she was with him for a while.”
“She knew him pretty well?”
“Looked that way to us.”
“It’s hard to kill someone you know well.”
“Baloney. Almost every killer knows the victim.”
“In cold blood, I mean. It’s harder to do it in cold blood when you know someone well.”
Russo talked around a last big bite of burger. “If you say so.” Even someone clear across the dining room could have seen the contents of his mouth. Then, just for a second, I looked him in the eye. He looked away immediately, but I had seen the raw intelligence there, and I realized all the rest of it was probably an act. I decided to call him on it.
I took a huge bite of my own burger and let a little bit of it fall out when I talked. “I heard the Delarosa woman was with the URNG.”
“Seems like you heard a lot.”
“Do you think she was with them?”
“She most likely was, yeah.”
“What makes you think that? Because she said so?” My mouth was still full. It was hard to say the “s” sounds without spewing bits of burger across the table, so I did.
Russo was watching me suspiciously, his eyes aimed at my mouth. He said, “Because of the evidence, all right?”
“What evidence?”
“She knew a lot of details about Toledo’s life back in Guatemala. She talked about him like he stole his money from the Indians. She sent her demands to a TV station. She sent in videos. You probably saw them, right? Everybody else did.”
“I remember.”
“Yeah, well, the uniform she wore and the insignia checked out. And she mentioned several known members of that commie group of hers.”
“The URNG aren’t really Communists. At least not anymore. Nowadays they’re just another Guatemalan political party.”
“Whatever.”
“Why would she shoot videos?”
“To convey her demands.”
“Yeah, but videos contain a lot of extra information. It’s harder to control. It’s not safe. Why not just send notes?”
Russo pushed back from the table. “Obviously Delarosa wasn’t trying to play it safe, because the deal wasn’t about the money. It was personal. She believed Toledo was responsible for her father’s disappearance in Guatemala.”
This was new information to me. “How do you know that?”
He looked at me. “We did our job. She could of picked any of the guys who used to run things down in Guatemala, but she picked Toledo. We wanted to know why, so we asked around. Turned out she had a grudge against him personally because of her father. But it was also an act of terrorism. A way for the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca to make a statement in a big way. If you steal from the Guatemalan people, the URNG will get the money back, and they will kill you, okay?”